Today we’re going to talk about becoming an influencer. I was poking around on the internet, and I didn’t really see a lot of people talking about becoming an influencer. People talk about wanting to start a YouTube channel or an Instagram account because they want to make bread. The thing is, there are people on YouTube and Facebook who are making millions of dollars a year or a month being an influencer, not necessarily selling anything.

I am an influencer. I know, right. It’s kind of crazy. But, I sell stuff. Since I came into the game just selling stuff, it’s going to be hard for me to sit back and let someone else get all that money.

Let’s talk about being an Instagram influencer. I’m a media buyer and what that means is I buy placements on ads on YouTube, Facebook, whatever. So, when I’m looking for engagement, I’m looking for real engagement. I am looking for true engagement. Because the influencer marketplace is so dynamic and so big, that you have people who will inflate their numbers to make you think they are bigger than they are. If you advertise with those people, your money is not going to go anywhere.

Let’s say your name is Carl and you’re crazy about watches. You start an Instagram account of you “rocking” watches, right. You’ve got a little swag and a little style. The next thing you know, people are approaching you offering you $50 to post something for them on your account. So, then you put this post on your Instagram account.

Let’s say they make $10,000 in sales and the cost of the goods was $3000. You need to know your worth, because you just got $50 for posting the ad on your account and the guy made $10K. You can go to the Social Bluebook and this gives you the value of placements determined by your account metrics. You have to create an account, then they will give you dollar values you should charge based on your account activity. They offer values for a shout out and for a dedicated upload. Direct links and activity promotion are two other activities that are given a dollar value.

There is this girl named Mindy who is an influencer. What she does is take pictures in exotic places. A lot of hotels and retreats actually pay her to come and take pictures. I’m not kidding. I think she has five Instagram accounts. That is one way you can kill it with Instagram. Now, here’s the rub. You’ve got to build it.

You can make a lot of money doing this. You can have a lot of fun. You can go places. You can do stuff. But, you must build the Instagram account. Once you build it and you get true engagement, you can make what the average person makes in a year in a month or a quarter.

Now let’s talk about Facebook. We’ll talk about Kev on Stage. He’s another influencer. He uses his channel to create booking opportunities for himself. Let’s say he has 500 people and charges them $30 to attend. That’s $15,000. If he gets 70% of that with 30% going to the house, he still ends up making $10,500. Let’s just say he makes about $50,000 for working six days. That’s the power of being an influencer.

There’s another comedian I know who does about $100,000 a month in booking. I can’t remember the guy’s name. He has bug eyes.

The new YouTube algorithm is so dope, that it is allowing people to get to $400 to maybe $1000 in AdSense money with relatively small subscriber bases. It’s not about the subscriber bases, it’s about the views. I was watching this young lady who has about 25,000 subscribers but she does about $3800 a month in AdSense because she has like 12 banking videos that keep bringing that money in.

______

Question: Can you build an audience on Blogger?

Answer: Don’t do it because you can’t take that audience with you.

______

Here’s how it goes on being an influencer, you have to create a following. Then you monetize that following by taking ads or promote a post. But, first you have to build a following.

Influencer marketing is growing and starting to spread. It’s mostly on Instagram. It’s on YouTube and it is starting to come to Facebook.

If you want to do YouTube or podcasts and you don’t know what you want to do, start on something. You can always change later. But, that will allow you to build valuable skill sets that you can use in other ventures.

You need to get started now. Get your camera phone and start making videos now. Write a goal down and do it. Go through the ugly beginner thing. This influencer thing is just getting started.

There are going to be influencers who have more power and pull than cable channels. Yes, it’s already happening. The epicenter is Los Angeles, Salt Lake Center and New York and some other cities. You’re going to have YouTubers with 50, 60 million subscribers, right? Then, they’re going to drop a video and get 10 million people just like that. That is coming.

There’s this guy named Casey Neistat. People love this guy. Every time he puts up a video, he could easily be making $30,000 to $50,000 per video. That doesn’t include the old inventory; that’s just for new uploads. He could be making $500,000 to a million a month from YouTube ads.

You want to get on this gravy train. Some people think it’s too late, but it’s not. It’s just beginning.

I’ve been testing the algorithm. As I said earlier, I’ve been getting away from the stuff that YouTube wants me to do. The problem is it is diametrically opposed to me making money. So, I have just decided that I will pay for traffic. I did that and it exploded my channel. I got 9300 subscribers in one month. The paid traffic was subsidized by AdSense. I didn’t have ads on all my videos that I had paid traffic on.

It blows my mind for real. I am still testing this. But, essentially the money I am paying for traffic could be paid back to me by the AdSense money I earn from that extra traffic. I was like, “Oh My Goodness.”

Some of you are looking for sure things. This is not a sure thing. But, I’m telling you, you need to get started. You don’t know, but you could become one of those people making this crazy bread.

This is incredible. This is like crazy incredible. You can literally pull out a camera phone and start making videos.

There’s this guy, Peter McKinnon who just got started and he’s doing really well. He just got started about a year ago. He does a lot of vlogging, photography stuff. Four months ago, he had $500K. He’s got over a million subscribers. This could be you in a year.

Get started. Don’t worry about being perfect. Don’t worry about having the right camera. Just get started making videos.

If you like this, be sure to get on my email list for updates to live streams and special offers. Subscribe today!